The Mercurians were a problem in themselves. For of all the planets, theirs was a ruthless Matriarchy. The striding, uncompromising Amazons that emerged from that blunt, utilitarian-looking ship, were in themselves a promise of trouble. They gazed around them out of blazing dark eyes, and their metallic complexions seemed to flow oddly like quicksilver with their movements, as if their features were fluid. Only the eyes, hard, suspicious, expecting the worst, retained their unyielding character. When the Martians emerged, tall, tawny-haired, with their immense violet eyes and exaggeratedly narrow waists, that contrasted with their broad shoulders, it occurred to Bill that the least accident would precipitate an holocaust that would end in the most gigantic hecatomb the universe had ever seen. He shuddered to think what would happen if the least delegate were to meet with harm. From the very beginning, he had protested against this inter-planetary meeting on Terra, and great as his influence was, profound as the respect was in which his unique powers were held, the Council vote had been against him. Still, Bill Nardon could not rid himself of the feeling that this was a wild goose chase, that nothing would be accomplished by a meeting of the highest dignitaries of the Inter-Planetary League--in short, that the great danger of an _accident_ that was being incurred was not only unnecessary--but futile, which was far worse. Asprawl in the great hetero-plastic chair, his long legs extended, his superb torso completely relaxed, he looked as if even his great muscles would never again lift that magnificent body upright. But all the while his unique mind was absorbed in assembling multitudes of details and facts, coordinating and correlating psychological factors and psychic coordinates with the speed of thought into a clear picture which in the end proved--absolutely nothing. He was baffled. To the tragic problem which would soon be under discussion in the stupendous _Universarium_, expressly built for that momentous purpose, he would be able to bring precisely nothing. For once he had failed. And Bill damned the cold efficiency of the Master Neurograph machine that had unerringly summarized his strange mental coordinates. For Bill's mind had the peculiar gift of being able to grasp a series of basic facts and from them deduce with supernal accuracy the individual answer to any _human_ problem. What took the great Philosophers in Psychiatry VI days, and weeks, and even months to solve, Bill Nardon could coordinate and give the correct answer to in hours, sometimes minutes.